


and the clock hit zero

by tigriswolf



Series: Alternate Universe [69]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Apocalypse, Child Death, Destruction, Disturbing Themes, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-10
Updated: 2012-06-10
Packaged: 2017-11-07 10:29:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/430050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigriswolf/pseuds/tigriswolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two differing versions of the Winchesters triggering the apocalypse after “All Hell Breaks Loose” and how the Harvelle women deal with it. </p><p>Warning: they are not happy stories.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Funeral of Ravens

**Author's Note:**

> Title: A Funeral of Ravens  
> Disclaimer: not my characters; just for fun.  
> Warnings: AU for "All Hell Breaks Loose"  
> Pairings: Dean/Sam  
> Rating: R  
> Wordcount: 675  
> Point of view: third

There's hope, somewhere. 

But not here.

.

She does everything by rote, salting the bodies and burning the building down around them. She can't let them linger—not like this. It sears deep into her soul; no mother should have to outlive her children.

Surely, there's hope out there. Other hunters had to escape the massacre. Had to survive.

She always fussed at John for his quest. Now she has her own.

And it aches, just like she'd always suspected it would.

.

Bobby's gone. And Missouri. Joshua and Nathaniel, Megana—everyone. Even Gregory, high up in the mountains.

She's the only one left.

.

There is nothing to do but head west, towards the sinking sun. She passes through shells of towns, through blackened buildings and rotting corpses; nothing escapes them. Not children and newborns, not crones and grandmothers.

Dogs do, and cats. Horses. Serpents. Ravens and crows are everywhere, darkening the sky. She watches their flocks block out the clouds and whispers, "Murders and funerals." It's bitter, maddened laughter that tumbles from her lips.

They kill what used to be their kind and leave everything else alive. They killed her baby girl and her foundling boy, and all her friends. But they let kittens prowl and puppies frolic, and they embrace wrapped in a snake's coils.

She used to love those boys, John's sons. They were her hope, once.

But now she sees them for what they are. For what they've always been. And it's too late.

It's too late.

.

She hits the ocean and stops, stares out over the water. The sun is setting and a cool wind blows from the waves.

She still hears the screams. They blend with the roar of the ocean, the slap of the rolling waves on the sand. The salt scent mingles with the salt she used to set her children free.

Tears prick at her eyes and she slaps them away. Now is not the time to break, to mourn. Now is the time for vengeance.

Now is the time to hunt them boys down.

.

The crows caw overhead. Dogs roam the streets, gnawing on what used to be humans. Families. She barely keeps herself from retching as she sees a little girl's corpse being tugged between two collies.

She doesn't have the time to stop and bury them all, to say the rites that'll let them move on. She has to keep going, following the destruction. After it's done, she'll come back.

After it's done.

.

She follows them to the Gulf of Mexico and they let her see them on the beach, naked as newborns, cavorting in the waves without a care in the world.

There's a cougar stretched out, sunning, and a small pack of wolves playing chase with the water. There're crows and ravens, and even a golden eagle, flying above them. Dean has a cobra wrapped around his left arm and Sam has a black mamba coiled about his torso, its head resting on his shoulder.

She's going to be sick.

She has the Colt and one bullet, and that's not enough. Not nearly enough. She wants to sob, to fall to her knees and ask why they didn't kill her, too, why they let her see the bodies of her babies, of her friends, of all those people between Nebraska and here.

"Shh," Dean says, lightly touching her cheek, taking the Colt from her slack grip. She's come this far, and she's going to fail, and she hates him so much she can't see.

Sam reaches out to trace her jaw and leans down, presses a soft kiss to her forehead. "There was always a reason, Ellen," he whispers, his right hand tightening on her shoulder. "Even when I couldn't see it."

She jerks back but doesn't go far, and the mamba slithers over to her. "And what's that?" she asks, voice barely a shade of what it used to be.

His smile is dark and dangerous, his green eyes fathomless.

Dean kisses her lips and a cold breeze blows off the Gulf.


	2. what a little girl's made of

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title: what a little girl’s made of  
> Fandom: “Supernatural”  
> Disclaimer: not my characters; just for fun. Title from “Gunpowder and Lead” by Miranda Lambert.  
> Warnings: AU after All Hell Breaks Loose  
> Pairings: none  
> Rating: PG13  
> Wordcount: 1225  
> Point of view: third

She’s not the girl she was when they first broke into Mama’s saloon. She’s not that wide-eyed innocent, charmed by a roguish grin and huge hazel eyes. She’s not young and naïve anymore, out to prove herself to the world in general, and that man in particular. 

She thinks she might have loved him. Now… now, though, she knows what she has to do.

.

Dean changed, after. Sam died in that ghost town, and everyone knows it. Knew it. Whatever. And what Dean brought back… it wasn’t his brother.

She figures she understands, though. From the moment she first saw Dean Winchester, she knew he’d light the world afire and watch it burn for his brother.

She just never thought it’d really come to pass.

.

But Sam died, and then wasn’t Sam anymore. Dean changed slowly, so slowly no one even noticed.

Sam — _NotSam_ — played the game well. Perfectly. Until Dean killed Bobby, not a single person knew.

Until Dean killed Bobby in front of a room packed to the gills with hunters, and Sam — _NotSam_ — smiled, not a single person in the world had a fucking _clue_.

.

The hunters became the hunted that day, with Dean—NotDean?—and NotSam cutting a swath from one ocean to the other.

Mom practically grabbed her and ran, heading for a cabin high up in the mountains. “No one knows about this place,” Mom told her, digging guns out of the closet. “Not even your daddy did.”

And Mom added, “Stay here,” with a kiss to her forehead as she left.

.

Jo hasn’t heard from Mama since. It’s been over four months. There’s no news from the outside world, but from the highest peak, she sees smoke.

Sometimes, she thinks she’s the only one left. It terrifies her. Being alone in the world… it’s a lonesome thing, and Jo’s never done well by herself.

.

She thinks it’s a Thursday when she leaves the cabin, with five knives and three guns. She walks down the mountain, staring at the ground and sky in equal measure, searching for any sign of life.

There’s nothing.

.

The town is deserted. Jo remembers when it brimmed with life, with families and dogs, with kids laughing.

There are abandoned cars and bones everywhere. The buildings are gutted and blackened. There’s not a single sound beyond the wind in the trees; only the plants have flourished in this new world.

It makes Jo want to break down and sob.

.

She wanders the country, always on the look-out for survivors. There are feral animals, every now and then, but apparently not even creatures escaped the purge. Nothing that breathed and moved made it past the NotWinchester’s attack. Jo wonders why.

Half a year after she left Mama’s sanctuary, Jo finds a puppy. She thinks it might be a mix of Burmese mountain dog and Husky, but she’s just not sure. Bobby would’ve known.

She names the dog Ares.

.

Ares grows in leaps and bounds over the next year. He’s huge, shoulder reaching her hip, and she feels safe with him at her side.

It isn’t hard to scrounge up food in this new world; it sits in all the houses, in the stores, waiting for scavengers that never come.

They all died, too.

.

Mom told her once that John Winchester was basically the best that’d ever been. Smart and brave, stubborn enough to move mountains. A marine, years ago, and yet still untamable as the sea.

Jo always thought she was exaggerating, until John’s boys broke into the Roadhouse. After that, she figured Mom hadn’t been telling everything.

And John’s boys surpassed John with ease.

.

No one saw it coming. Totally out of left-field, completely out of the blue. From nowhere.

The perfect surgical strike to take out the hunters came from the best hunters there’d ever been.

Irony at its most beautiful.

.

Jo finds a little boy when Ares is one-and-a-half. The kid can’t be more than five or six, as feral as a wildcat. It takes her the better part of a month to convince him she’s safe, won’t hurt him.

Even after he quits shying away from her, he won’t speak. She names him Cade.

He’s the first living person she’s seen since Mama left her behind.

.

She doesn’t know where to start searching for the NotWinchesters or what she’ll do if she finds them. What can she do? No weapons hurt them—no weapon can even get close enough.

Hunters tried.

Maybe that Colt… but Mama said the last bullet had been used.

So there’s nothing. Nothing at all. Just her and a dog and a boy, nowhere to go, no end in sight.

.

Cade says his first word a year after she finds him. He calls her “Mommy.” Jo buries her face in his long, dark hair and weeps.

.

She comes across the Colt — Mama had showed it to her, after Dean used it that final time, before hiding it away and not telling her where — in a graveyard two months after Cade speaks. There aren’t any bullets, but maybe she has chance.

Jo scoffs and tucks the Colt into the back of her jeans. There are no chances, not anymore.

.

It’s when she’s not actively looking for them that she finds them. Turns a corner in the shell Atlanta’s become and there he is — Dean Winchester. NotDean. Monster and killer, and still so fucking gorgeous it aches.

He grins at her, that same grin she remembers, and says, “Hey, Jo.”

Jo pushes Cade behind her; Ares slinks up besides her, edging slightly in front, and snarls, baring his teeth. She’d known he could look intimidating, but, wow — even she’s slightly frightened, and Ares has never given her a cross look.

NotDean’s grin shifts into a smirk. “Thought we’d killed everyone — can’t say, though, that I’m surprised you made it.” He laughs and steps closer. “Your mom sure was a fighter.”

Fury wells up in her, along with hate. She used to love this man, she’s sure of that now. “Cade,” she whispers. “Run.”

Her boy takes off; Jo tells Ares, “Go with him.”

Ares hesitates, flicking an ear, then whirls around and follows Cade. Jo doesn’t move her gaze from Dean, but his eyes shift towards her only living family. “Think they’ll get that far, sweetheart?” he asks, then chuckles, “Think again.”

The Colt is loaded with silver bullets. They won’t do a thing to Dean, NotDean, what the fuck ever he is. But she’s got to try.

He laughs when the first bullet hits him in the heart.

.

Jo runs. She can’t find Ares or Cade, hasn’t seen NotSam, so she stretches her legs and runs. She doesn’t stop for miles, the Colt — useless fucking gun — clenched in her grip. She wants to throw it away, to break it, to punish it for failing… but it’s the only chance she has, at all. To avenge Mama. Bobby.

Ares and Cade.

.

She waits, by the Pacific coast. Eventually, one of them will come for her.

She doesn’t have the right bullets, just blessed silver with runes etched into the metal, but maybe… maybe it’ll be enough.

There’s thunder in the distance and lightning splits the sky in two. She cocks the gun and waits.


End file.
